Supper, Beneath the Trees, Beside the Pond, In the Garden

As the election of 2008 comes close, this is my attempt at a subtle statement of support.

I was out collecting seeds in the garden, and maintaining a presence to keep the hawks away, when my delightful wife brought me supper.  A simple plate of spaghetti, noodles, tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese, is a delightful and simple meal.  When you add a few embellishments from the garden it becomes sublime.

A cherry tomato, a stalk of celery, a couple of strands of garlic chives, a ripe red jalapeno, a sprig of basil and a sprig of mint all added to make it a delight.  Since each of these additions was picked fresh from the garden right there, since they are all grown naturally with no pesticides, this was a meal impossible to obtain, even in fine restaurants that I could hardly afford.

Will the Autumn wind blowing through the dappled willow shade, again the ambiance was sublime.

I did pause to take a few photos, such golden moments make life fulfilling.

While my salary has not kept up with the cost of living, the cost of gasoline, and the cost of food,  I am doing better than a lot of folk, who have lost their jobs or have high medical expenses.  Odd that the cost of food and fuel, are no longer used as part of the cost of living calculations, this does not seem quite honest to me.  It seems as if someone knew that they were going to go up out of proportion and would rather not have people know that their fellow countrymen were becoming impoverished.

It seems that the EPA has been covering up evidence regarding the death of bees. Colony Collapse Syndrome directly effects me, my crops and the colonies I have tried to keep and lost.  There is a strong prevailing Southern wind that crosses rice fields and cotton fields before it reaches me.  If these lingering pesticides in minute quality have been causing my bees to fail, and the native wild bees to suffer, then the EPA has been corupted to destroy what it was created to protect.

Yet I hear people complain that our government coddles us.  700 billion in debt to coddle the wealthy and I hear of no such complaint.

So now I will head back out to my garden, a lovely place, but perhaps one that is not as pesticide free as I might  like, due to the EPA and Bayer CropScience.   When I am out in my garden I will forget that I do not have twenty healthy bee hives on my property.  I will entirely forget the cost of bee suits, smokers, foundation wax, colonies, and extractors.  I know what a bee hive used to produce for me.  I know the delight of waterlily and wild flower honey.  These days I get a few pounds at most before a colony fails.  These days, I don’t have bee colonies swarming and making more and more colonies if I do not remove honey fast enough.  I miss having stacks of five gallon buckets filled with crystallized honey.

So now you know how I have already voted.

Bob